Berberian Sound Studio 2013

British sound engineer Gilderoy, portrayed by Toby Jones, arrives at an Italian film studio called Berberian, under the impression that he will be working on a film centered around horses. To his sheer dismay, he quickly realizes that the project is actually the disturbing Italian giallo film, The Equestrian Vortex. Despite the unsettling revelation, Gilderoy immerses himself in the work, which includes Foley sound effects made from vegetables to portray the gruesome torture scenes, as well as mixing voiceovers from session artists Silvia and Claudia into the film’s chilling score.

As time goes by, the weight of isolation mounts for Gilderoy; he feels the emotional distance growing between himself and his mother back home. The atmosphere within the studio grows increasingly hostile, with his colleagues displaying rudeness towards one another as well as him. The horror scenes escalate in their grotesqueness, yet the director, Santini, remains adamant in his denial of the film’s horror elements. After navigating through the film studio’s perplexing bureaucracy regarding his reimbursement request, Gilderoy discovers that his submitted plane ticket is invalid—it turns out he never actually took that flight.

From this point forward, the narrative spirals into chaos. Gilderoy starts experiencing strange auditory and visual phenomena during the night. He learns of a haunting tragedy involving Silvia, the voiceover artist, who suffered abuse at the hands of Santini. A confrontation ensues, leading Silvia to storm out and trash a significant portion of their work, compelling Gilderoy to record the dialogue anew with an actress named Elisa. As they revisit Silvia’s sequences, escalating tensions blur the lines between the blood-soaked giallo film and Gilderoy’s reality. He begins to envision himself as a character in a film about his own life—becoming fluently Italian and adopting a more brutal demeanor.

In a tense recording session with Francesco, Gilderoy finds Elisa’s screams lacking. In a moment of desperation, he suggests torturing her with jarring and dissonant sounds to provoke the ideal scream. The outcome, however, is that Elisa walks out, leaving it ambiguous whether Gilderoy’s intentions were malicious or if he was subconsciously trying to protect her from the horrific cycle of abuse. In a haunting climax, during a sudden power outage, Gilderoy observes the movie projector starting by itself, casting a brilliant light in which he seemingly vanishes.